tankist
Active Member
i expected something very very grand, but still was tremendously impressed by the size of this venue. i learned all i could learn about the place, studied the plan, looked at pictures, planned my visit, butt o no avail - at the moment i got to the main floor i was lost.
we arrived at Hamburg at 4AM (From Amsterdam on DB City Night Line train) so the day started very early. we got lucky and they let us check in into our hotel room that early so we had a moment to catch a breath (legs were still not fully rested from running around the day before) and drop of our small luggage. We finished our Deutche Bahn breakfast and started walking.
my happy face:
we got in almost as the place opened. the ammount of visitors inside was quite a surprise given it was a work day and the streets them self were quite empty (compared to not only DT Chigaco, but say London)
I was planning to do a brief overview of everything and them do another in depth walk around to savor the thing and take pictures. well, it didn't happen.After an hour or so, when we covered US and almost all of the Scandinavia, wife who actually really enjoyed the view asked to take a break. after ice cream in the cafeteria she decided to take a nap in the comfy ICE armchair and i continued alone. but then around 10-10:30 things got really crowded, waiting and sometimes pushing my way through to get to the handrails. keeping the arrogant german kids from pushing themself between me and the layout required some elbow work. taking pictures in there is not easy as it is, and then they were trying to push their cameras in front of my face to make it even more fun.
didn't manage to get any excellent pictures out of there, but still got a few not to bad ones.
maintenance work during business hours
fixing derailment. working the conducting couplings apparently wasn't an easy task. eventually someone more competent had to help him out. but then it wasn't that easy of task either, without knocking the rest of the very long train of and destroying the dense catenary above the station.
rest of the pictures are here: http://public.fotki.com/tankist/places/euro/11-hamburg-miniatur/
all in all i can say "WOW!!", but it seems that there are not to many trains running at a time (even thought the storage level underneath the main layout is full of cars and trains). most of the trains that are moving
making horrible screeching sound. i suspect it might be the worn center pickup ski (they have bunch of marklin in there).
for those who intend to see it i highly recommend getting in there early. that way there will be an hour or 2 of relatively quiet viewing . entire day could be spent there easily (with breaks in cafeteria), but we had to move on.
PS
that entire trip was almost all Railroading one. outside of crossing the pond it was all rail . well apart of two Ferry crossings, one of which was with the train rolling in.
i will post photo review as soon as i clean and process the pictures, with total of +1200 i took in these i'm only half way through.
we arrived at Hamburg at 4AM (From Amsterdam on DB City Night Line train) so the day started very early. we got lucky and they let us check in into our hotel room that early so we had a moment to catch a breath (legs were still not fully rested from running around the day before) and drop of our small luggage. We finished our Deutche Bahn breakfast and started walking.
my happy face:
we got in almost as the place opened. the ammount of visitors inside was quite a surprise given it was a work day and the streets them self were quite empty (compared to not only DT Chigaco, but say London)
I was planning to do a brief overview of everything and them do another in depth walk around to savor the thing and take pictures. well, it didn't happen.After an hour or so, when we covered US and almost all of the Scandinavia, wife who actually really enjoyed the view asked to take a break. after ice cream in the cafeteria she decided to take a nap in the comfy ICE armchair and i continued alone. but then around 10-10:30 things got really crowded, waiting and sometimes pushing my way through to get to the handrails. keeping the arrogant german kids from pushing themself between me and the layout required some elbow work. taking pictures in there is not easy as it is, and then they were trying to push their cameras in front of my face to make it even more fun.
didn't manage to get any excellent pictures out of there, but still got a few not to bad ones.
maintenance work during business hours
fixing derailment. working the conducting couplings apparently wasn't an easy task. eventually someone more competent had to help him out. but then it wasn't that easy of task either, without knocking the rest of the very long train of and destroying the dense catenary above the station.
rest of the pictures are here: http://public.fotki.com/tankist/places/euro/11-hamburg-miniatur/
all in all i can say "WOW!!", but it seems that there are not to many trains running at a time (even thought the storage level underneath the main layout is full of cars and trains). most of the trains that are moving
making horrible screeching sound. i suspect it might be the worn center pickup ski (they have bunch of marklin in there).
for those who intend to see it i highly recommend getting in there early. that way there will be an hour or 2 of relatively quiet viewing . entire day could be spent there easily (with breaks in cafeteria), but we had to move on.
PS
that entire trip was almost all Railroading one. outside of crossing the pond it was all rail . well apart of two Ferry crossings, one of which was with the train rolling in.
i will post photo review as soon as i clean and process the pictures, with total of +1200 i took in these i'm only half way through.
i didn't even notice.
